


never do any harm to the world

by fardareismai



Series: Imagine Claire and Jamie (Prompts from the blog that I have fulfilled) [20]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M, Quiet times, Song Lyrics, Time Travel, book prompt: dragonfly in amber
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 14:45:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5543861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>anonymous asked: imagine claire, prompted by jamie's curiosity about the music/musicals and songs from her time, teaching jamie how to dance one of the dances from her time e.g. the foxtrot</p>
<p>shiskebob asked: Hello! Thanks for helping us get through this dreaded droughtlander! It bugged me how Jamie thought that Claire must come from a “easier time” in the show. I would love to see Claire really telling Jamie about the future -specifically about the war and her time in it and how it compares to 1700s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	never do any harm to the world

Jamie snorted as he looked at the invitation (since attendance was mandatory to everyone staying at Holyrood Palace unless they were mortally ill or had been given some other dispensation by the Prince himself, it was more of an order on fine parchment).

“Dancing,” he said, with the same intonation he might have used for rather disgusting bodily functions.  “Has the wee fool no notion that it’s a war we’re fighting?”

I didn’t bother to look up from the camphor mixture I was steeping on the fireplace.  “In my experience, dancing is a part of fighting.”

I could feel his skepticism, even without seeing his face.  “I know about sword dancing and all,” he said, sounding wary, “but that’s an omen- to dance between the swords?”

“Very subtle,” I said, smiling.  “No, it’s not the same thing but… war takes its toll doesn’t it?  When I was in France, with the Army-” I began, but cut off.  I didn’t like to talk about before… after… whatever time it was with him.  It was always a painful conversation for both of us, coming back, as it inevitably did, to Frank.

“Go on, tell me about your war.”

“It wasn’t like this, people coming and going, leaving in the spring for the planting and coming back with the winter.  The men were conscripted- they stayed because they were required to.”

“And you?” he asked, sitting on the sofa and leaning forward to listen to my story.  “You didn’t follow Frank?”

“No,” I shook my head.  “Frank was in London, in Intelligence.  I went to France.  I volunteered.”  I sighed and turned to face him.  “Six years in the war, away from him.”

“So long?”  Jamie frowned.  “Sassenach, all told, you’ve been a soldier as long as I have.”

I stopped and thought about that.  I’d never really considered myself a soldier, not during the War, and not now but I had gone to war at 20, he at 16.  We had both seen as much war as each other.

“How can one war last so long?  The fighting was constant?”

I shrugged.  “More or less.  It wasn’t like this.”  I gestured vaguely around trying to encompass the houses of Stewart and Hanover, England, Scotland, the clans, everything.  “It wasn’t one king against another, one country against another.  It was the world.  Whole continents fighting each other.

“This war,” I continued, standing and beginning to pace, “no one but the people here will remember it.  It matters to the English and the Scots, but Americans will never learn about it, nor the Spanish or the Chinese.  Not even if we win this.  My war, the World War, no one in the entire world went untouched, and it will never be forgotten.”

“And you chose to go?”

I turned on him furiously.  “It was my home!  They wanted to destroy everything we know of decency and goodness!”

Jamie sat back in shock.  “What do you mean by that?”

I opened my mouth to explain, and then stopped, looking at him for a long moment.  How was I to explain the Third Reich to a man with Jamie’s prejudices?  For all Jamie was an educated, tolerant man, there were beliefs in this time that were unthinkable in my own.  I thought he probably did not know any Jews, and if he did, he probably considered them strange and “other.”

“Imagine the worst thing that a human can do to another.  Not simply killing a person, but robbing them of their entire humanity.  Imagine that the government were to do that to everyone.  Every single person that they did not believe was right in their thinking or behaviour or even the colour of their hair.  They wanted every person in the world to look and think and be just the same.  That is what we were fighting against.”

“How did you not go mad?”

I laughed, a harsh, humourless sound.  “We drank like fish, and fell in love and out of love.  We fought like maniacs, and made love like demons.”

Jamie blinked in shock, and opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.

“We had sweethearts, lovers, husbands, and wives at home, and we never stopped loving them, but in that moment, you needed someone to touch you or you would go mad.”

“So you-” Jamie began, the question obvious on his face.

“No, I never did.  I was true to Frank, but that’s what I meant at the beginning: every time there was a night free, we played music and danced, because you had to get it out somehow.”

I could feel that my face was flushed with the energy of the argument, and the pressure of forcing back the memories of another war in another world.

“How did you dance, Sassenach?”

I looked up in surprise.  It was not the question I had expected.

“You’d be shocked if you saw them. They’re nothing like the sorts of dances you see now.”

He cocked his head, intrigued.  “Show me.”

I laughed, thinking he was teasing, but he continued to look at me with his eyebrows raised.

“All right then,” I said, shrugging.  There was no one else in our rooms, even Fergus had vanished for the afternoon.

I had him stand and when he would have stood apart from me for a traditional minuet, I stepped into his space and positioned his hands into a waltz hold- a closer embrace than any person would have allowed on a dance floor in those days.

Jamie looked shocked and intrigued, and I smiled up at him.

I took him through the simple four-beat syncopated measure of the foxtrot.  He could not hear music, so I did not bother trying to hum something for him to follow, instead using my tongue to click out the rhythm until his feet had it.

He allowed me to lead, albeit backward, never trying to wrest the control from me.  He was a better dancer than I, and I felt confident that, given time and practice, he would have given even the young surgeon with whom I had danced most often in those last few years of the war a run for his money.

Finally I stopped, and Jamie took my right hand and brought it to his heart while tightening his hold on my back so I stepped even closer to him.  I tilted my face up to his and could feel his warm breath across my face.

“Oh my Sassenach,” he murmured softly.  “My warrior wife.  I do pray for peace.  We have had little of it in our lives, you and I, no?”

I thought of tempests then- wars are storms that sweep people in and away from what they know, and I had been swept away by storm and war and circumstance more times than most, but I found that there was peace in the eye whenever I stood in Jamie’s arms.

“Back home with you,” I sang softly into the linen of his shirt. “Imagine what that means.  We’ll revel in the old familiar themes.  We’ll walk the quiet hillside while the world peacefully sleeps.  In your welcome arms I’ll be back home for keeps.”


End file.
